


After Every Sunday

by allonsy_gabriel



Series: After Every Sunday [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art, Artist John, First Meetings, Fluff, Happy Ending, Human Disaster Alexander Hamilton, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, M/M, Painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 19:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14503800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsy_gabriel/pseuds/allonsy_gabriel
Summary: Alexander hasn't ever really been one for art. He'll take a poem over a painting, an article over an artifact, a story over a sculpture any day.And yet, here he stands, transfixed, in an art gallery, staring at the canvas in front of him.





	After Every Sunday

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS A VAGUE SEQUEL TO THE SINNERS (AND THE SAINTS) BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THAT.
> 
> also I wrote this in one sitting over two hours it's a mess but for some reason I love it

Alexander hasn't ever really been one for art. He'll take a poem over a painting, an article over an artifact, a story over a sculpture any day. His passion, his creativity, lies in words over visuals. Because while a picture may be worth a thousand words, those thousand words are not worth _less_ , and there are just some things that, in Alexander's experience, are impossible to capture in an image.

And yet, here he stands, transfixed, in an art gallery, staring at the canvas in front of him.

He hadn't wanted this assignment in the first place—he was well on his to a Pulitzer, and there were better (read: worse) people to cover the little article about the latest collection moving into a tiny local gallery.

But, Washington had insisted, and Angelica had said it was payback for saddling her with the “story” about the cat that was sailing itself down the Hudson, and so here Alexander was, staring at the cacophony of colour in front of him, paralyzed.

From far away, it doesn't look like much: a Technicolor swirl, almost violently bright, the colours so bold they're almost harsh. If paintings could speak, this one would be screaming.

Maybe that's why Alexander couldn't help but take a step closer—he's always felt like he had to scream, had to shout and yell simply so people would _listen_ , so people would pay _attention_. On some level, he empathises with the mess of hues on the canvas.

And then—and _then_ —he gets up close. Then, he sees the actual painting, the actual _art_ , and he feels like his heart is about to expand and burst from his chest. Because the painting isn't just a wild symphony of pigment, no, it's a tangle of vines, blooming with distorted flowers. It's a twisted garden, almost painful to look at, and buries in it are flames and lightning and a million, million stars.

It's the universe compressed into paint and smeared on sixteen square feet.

All at once, Alexander understands how people could go mad with this stuff, how they could lose themselves in the thousand shades, get swept away in the pandemonium of it all.

The plaque under the canvas proclaims it _After Every Sunday_ , by some anonymous artist, and Alexander wishes he knew the guy just so he could yell at him for turning his world upside-fucking-down.

Alexander spends the rest of the evening lingering over _After Every Sunday_. He does a quick walk around the rest of the gallery, but he always finds himself circling back to the garden of colours against the wall in the corner of the room.

When the night is over, Alexander can’t help but feel as if he’s left something behind, as if, cliche as it sounds, a piece of his heart got stuck to the wash of the blues and reds and yellows and greens. He’s lost himself in the flood of orange and purple and turquoise.

Alexander spends far too much time at the gallery over the next few weeks. _After Every Sunday_ becomes his Secret Garden, his Narnia, his own private world. He’s pretty sure the curators think he’s crazy. He knows his friends do. He’d taken them to see it, dragged them each individually down the halls of the gallery he can navigate better than his own home.

They don’t get it. They don’t see it. Ever as he tugs them closer, points out every hidden spark or leaf or galaxy, all they see is the paint, the uproar of colour.

“I mean, it’s pretty,” Hercules concedes. “In a sort of… loud way. It’s not ugly.”

“But-but _look_ ! Look, there’s so _much_ —” Alexander argues, but Hercules cuts him off.

“I see it, Ham,” he says, even though he _doesn’t_ , he so obviously _doesn’t_. He claps Alexander on the shoulder. “I just don’t see why you love it so much, man. It’s no Mona Lisa.”

Alexander gives up after that, allows Herc to drag him back to some bar and a couple shots of whiskey.

He shows Lafayette, praying that maybe the Frenchman, with his bullshit sophistication and his… French… ness… may see the same thing Alexander sees when he looks at the canvas.

Instead, Laf screws up his eyebrows into some sort of crinkled grimace and says, “It’s a bit brash, isn’t it?”

Alexander sighs in defeat.

Angelica thinks it’s too wild. Peggy likes the colours, but doesn’t like how it feels like, in her words, “taking a shit load of acid and looking in a funhouse mirror”. Aaron fucking Burr doesn’t really say much, just mutters something about beauty being in the eye of the beholder; Madison says it gives him a headache; fucking Jefferson says that it’s _nothing_ compared to the art he saw whilst on a business trip in France (not that Alexander takes _Jefferson_ to see it; no, he showed him a picture and then flipped him off when the magenta-clad asshole complained about the quality).

Alexander is starting to think he’s going crazy—actually, literally crazy—when he finally tugs Eliza along, snatching her away when she’s not grading papers or making lesson plans or having date night with Maria.

“You see it, right?” he asks her, almost manic with it. God, if only someone _got_ it—if only someone looked at _After Every Sunday_ and understood why it had devoured Alexander's world.

If only they could then explain it to Alexander himself.

Eliza, bless her, tries. She says it's fascinating, _oohs_ and _ahhs_ over the stars and the flowers and the fires Alexander points out in the splashes of paint.

But, in the end, Alexander knows she doesn't get it.

And so, with a groan that might be just a tad over dramatic, he sits on the bench near _After Ever Sunday_ alone. And, as he opens his laptop to hammer out an article on the possible future consequences of a of a fucking trade war with China (a fucking trade war, with _China_ ; Alexander swears he wishes _he_ were treasury secretary, just so he could go up to the president and explain in minute detail why, exactly, that is a _horrific_ idea) he realises with a start that _this_ is the first time he's seen _After Every Sunday_ on, well, _a Sunday_.

Maybe that’s why he’s not as surprised as he otherwise would be when another young man plops down on the bench beside him.

“Hey,” the man says, a sort of casual greeting that one gives without really expecting a reply.

This man, obviously, has never met Alexander.

“I’d offer to move, but this is the only bench near it, and, for some reason, I always write better around it,” Alexander offers up, not really looking up from his work.

“It?” the man asks, clearly confused, and Alexander suddenly remembers that not everyone’s world has been narrowed down to one fucking painting, like they’re some sort of hipster-slash-vampiric creep from a shitty indie movie.

“ _After Every Sunday_ ,” Alexander replies, nodding in the direction of the canvas he can see just over the top of his laptop screen.

“Oh!” the man says. “You, uh, you like it?”

He sounds shocked, sounds almost desperate for some sort of positive affirmation.

Alexander recognises that tone. That’s the tone he’s been using for the past three weeks, every time he pulls some poor soul into the only corner of this godforsaken art gallery he actually cares about.

“Yes!” he answers, probably more enthusiastically than the situation requires. “Yes, oh my God, I swear I love it so much it’s driving me insane! If I ever met the person who painted it, I’d probably either kiss them or deck them for completely fucking up my entire world!”

The man chuckles, and Alexander finally looks away from his work and the masterpiece in front of him, turning instead to face this particular stranger who’s joined him on the bench.

He seems to be Alexander’s height, with curly brown hair that is failing to be held back by the hair tie and bobby pins adorning it, more freckles than actual face, and eyes that make Alexander re-examine his definition of the word _art_ for the second time in a single month.

“Alexander Hamilton,” he blusters out, sticking out his hand and trying not to smile like a fool.

“John Laurens,” the man replies. When he shakes Alexander’s hand, Alexander sees it’s speckled not only with freckles, but paint, in every hue Alexander was recently made aware of. His hand look like art itself, like it belongs _inside_ _After Every Sunday_ , and Alexander finds himself choking on the effort to not absolutely _terrify_ this gorgeous man with a fucking avalanche of words.

“So,” Alexander says instead, “You like it too? _After Every Sunday_ , I mean.”

The man smiles. “You could say that,” he admits, his eyes seeming to glow under the gallery lights. “It’s a bit of a love-hate relationship, actually. On one hand, it’s definitely my best work. On the other hand, I think it’s about to get me punched.”

Alexander has to take a moment.

And then the moment is over, and Alexander is actually, physically choking, and John Laurens, of the beautiful eyes and a million freckles and the apparent ability to worm his way into Alexander's heart without even knowing him, is thumping him on the back with his fist and saying, “Shit, man, are you okay? I'm so fucking sorry, holy fuck, do you need water or something? Oh my God, I'm so sorry!”

And if, later, once Alexander has finally cleared his airways and regained his ability to speak eloquently, he says the only thing he needs is John's number?

That's his business.

***

(Six years later, _After Every Sunday_ hangs above the couch in their shared apartment. Their engagement photo hangs below it.

Alexander still doesn't understand how John did it, how he summed up Alexander's whole life with a few strokes of a paint brush, but now he's got their whole lives to figure it out.)

**Author's Note:**

> THERE MAY BE EVEN MORE FROM JOHN'S POV. WE'LL SEE.
> 
> tell me whatcha thought

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [How does one draw](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14546007) by [AWalkingParadox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AWalkingParadox/pseuds/AWalkingParadox)




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